


Slut Life, the Universe, and Everything

by Sub_Rosa



Category: CYOA - Fandom, Multi-Fandom, Original Work, Slut Life - Fandom
Genre: Be Careful What You Wish For, CYOA, Deconstruction, Dubious Consent, Extremely Dubious Consent, Game Shows, Gender Issues, Lesbian Character, Metafiction, Mind Games, Multi, Other, Parody, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sex Games, Sexuality Crisis, Slut Life, Trans Female Character, Wish Fulfillment, gratuitous references, multicross
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-09
Updated: 2018-02-09
Packaged: 2019-03-16 00:43:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13624932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sub_Rosa/pseuds/Sub_Rosa
Summary: "What price would be so high to pay as to make living forever not worth it?” Michael asked.“You really won’t like it,” Sadie replied.





	Slut Life, the Universe, and Everything

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the "choose-your-own-adventure" prompts of 4chan and /r/makeyourchoice; not by the interactive fiction which originally gave rise to the CYOA name.

“We need to think about immortality,” Sadie said one night, brushing a lock of cum-stained red hair away from her eyes.  
  
She and Michael were lying under the covers; she was on top of him for reasons that had nothing to do with the fact that they were in a single bed, and it probably said something about his relationship with her that  _this_  was what passed for pillow talk between the two of them.  
  
“I dunno," Michael said softly. His eyes kept fluttering, yearning to close under the weight of a sleepy afterglow. “Is there any reason why we have to think about it  _now?_ We’re not even in our thirties yet.”  
  
“Technically, no,” Sadie admitted. “We don’t have to think about it now. But if we’re the kind of people who procrastinate on matters of life and death, then we’ll also be the kind of people who end up procrastinating on the issue again later. And by the time we get off of our asses, our asses will be bony, and we won’t be able to have sex anymore. I don’t want to be horny but too old and dry to get off, Michael.”  
  
“Old people have sex too, you do realize?”  
  
“Have you ever  _seen_  old person sex?” Sadie pulled a face. “It’s gross on tape and I’ve never seen it in the flesh, so I’m not sure it’s actually real.”  
  
“First of all, old person sex totally exists. Second of all, if we’re the kind of people who look down on people in awkward bodies having sex, we don’t have any principled basis to be okay with having sex in  _our_  bodies.”  
  
Michael reached down to poke Sadie in the softness of her stomach, and she blushed. “I deserved that, but you’re still mean.”  
  
“You started body shaming first,” Michael said, teasing her like it's stock fucking vocabulary. “You’re also philosophizing. Not that I object, of course. Philosophy of life extension is sexy, baby.”  
  
“Oh, is that it? You only like me for my philosophy? You fucking pig, Michael.”  
  
Michael laughed out loud and pulled her close, kissing his way down her chest to prove that he loved her for more than her mind.

===

Michael was twenty-two when he met Sadie for the first time. 

He already felt  _way_  too old and jaded, watching all the wonder and possibility bleed out of the world. Magic and miracles had turned out to be real after all, but they had generally failed to make his life any more magical. His political protests and dreams of overthrowing the status quo hadn’t done much, all things considered, so he gave it up as a good try, and then buckled down to become a normal, productive member of the workforce.

There was a sort of dignity in that, right? It wasn’t like giving up on big dreams meant giving up on  _life_. He was just… making the best of things.

Freshly out of community college with a worthless degree, running out of the meager cash left behind by his late parents, he got a job as quickly as he could at a national shipping company. He moved onto a much smaller job at a corner bookstore; the manager had breath that smelled of brimstone. Every once in a while someone would walk away from that store speaking a new language. Just as often, someone would walk away unable to speak in anything but iambic pentameter.

He didn’t have any expectations for anything like that. He worked the shelves, keeping books stocked and sorted, most of the time with an earbud in one ear. Listening to pirated music, or pirated audiobooks, or pirated anime episodes from the nineties, standing in a shop full of books that he would never look at, only listen to.

One day he was working overtime, eking out a few more dollars and avoiding the loneliness of his own apartment, when he saw the most beautiful woman in the world.

She was stunning. She looked like she used Joseph’s technicolor dreamcoat as a towel and washed his dye into her hair. If manic pixie dream girls brought light to the lives of moody men like him, then this was obviously the girl who brought light to the lives of manic pixie dream girls. Like Ramona Flowers had a love child with Luna Lovegood, and fucking… Tegan and Sara, or something, with the guitar slung across her back.

He didn’t notice her because she was beautiful, though, or even because she stood out.

Instead he noticed her because she was standing in front of a shelf of children’s books, picking up a book that was most definitely  _not_  meant for children. The tome was almost as large as her torso, bound in black leather and silver clasps.

As soon as he saw the book, he immediately had some understanding of what it was. All of the hairs on his neck stood on end, the most basic premonition of panic and doom:  _be afraid, that thing doesn’t belong_. His eyes didn’t want to look directly at it, it was awful, horrible, terrifying,  _not his-_

She opened the book, and  _something_ boomed forth. It was a voice like a beast out of hell had decided to try and torture people merely by speech alone, just barely harmonic enough for anyone to make out the words, but still dissonant enough to make your ears ache.

“YOU HAVE FREED ME!” Screamed the thing that was crawling forth from the book, black tentacles seeping through the folds of the pages. “IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE ANCIENT CONTRACTS, I AM BOUND TO GRANT YOU ONE BOON.”

The voice was loud enough to draw a crowd, and the handful of other customers in the store watched the events with no small amount of intrigue and interest. “You should ask for enhanced intelligence!” someone piped up from the other side of the store.

“No,” someone else said. “She should ask for immortality-”

Michael could barely believe what he was seeing, although his second-hand enthusiasm for the woman was undercut by jealousy. It was his job to keep the books properly shelved, and she had found that strange out-of-place book before him. If he had just done his job right, he would be the one receiving the boon…

“I CAN GRANT YOU RICHES,” said the entity of the book, and Michael wondered if getting money that way would be considered as a form of counterfeiting. He never had kept track of the relevant laws. “OR YOUTH, OR FAME. NEW BODIES, NEW WAYS-”

“I want the mystery box!” declared the woman with the technicolor hair.

“...THE MYSTERY BOX?”

“You know,” she said firmly, talking down as if she was speaking to a child. “It’s one of the options you’re giving me, the one that you would only ever describe in vague terms? And the only way that I can learn exactly what the option does is by selecting it for myself? It’s a metaphor, I think, because you can’t know for sure what’s inside of a box until you open it, right?”

The sense of imminent doom spiked intensely, and  _something_  coagulated in thin air, a bleeding slit unfolding into an eye. Matter poured forth into arms and legs and a  _face_ ; the uncanny valley gave way to the legible and humanlike. Ugliness gave way to the second most beautiful women in the world, a lovely girl made of star-stuff and printing ink.

The creature of the book was beautiful, nude and attractive and slate-skinned, but even her comely appearance could not prevent Michael’s brain from screaming  _wrong, get away!_

“IF YOU ARE SO SURE…” The entity of the book trailed off with a scrap of hesitance. “AH… ‘BY REFUSING ME THE OPPORTUNITY TO PAY YOU BACK WITH A CONVENTIONAL BOON, I MUST INSTEAD PAY YOU BACK WITH MY SERVITUDE, UNTIL THE END OF YOUR DAYS, IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE ANCIENT CONTRACTS’.”

The other woman’s face heated, burning with scarlet visible from across the room. A drop of blood trickled from her nose. “Oh.  _Oh_. I… I can’t! That would be... wrong!”

“YOU ASKED FOR THE ‘MYSTERY BOX’. NO TAKE-BACKS ALLOWED, IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE ANCIENT CONTRACTS.”

“No! I’m not going to let you do that!”

“ACCEPT MY SERVITUDE, MORTAL WHELP!” The entity reached out and wrapped a clawed hand around her shoulder, visibly frustrated. “OR I WILL MAKE YOU ACCEPT IT!”

The woman slung her guitar off of her back, than smashed it across the entity’s head with the sound of breaking wire. The entity staggered, falling back and down against the ground, while she made a break for it, running behind a bookshelf and far out of the entity’s line of sight.

The thing trembled, its body language impeccably perverse, and it stood back up. “YOU,” it said, and Michael realized that it was staring at him. “WHERE DID SHE GO? IF YOU LIE, I WILL KNOW.”

“Uh…” He swallowed down his anxiety and reached behind his back, forming the Elder Sign with his left hand — a trick he’d learned from /x/ years ago — and falling back on a tried and true strategy, no matter if the entity told him it wouldn’t work. “I think she went that way,” he lied, pointing with his right at the door that led to the back room.

It bolted away where he pointed, like a dog playing fetch, crashing through the door; in the silence that followed, the girl peeked out from behind the bookshelf, and Michael met her eyes.

Five seconds later, there was a terrible squelching noise.

Michael’s boss walked out of the back room, absolutely covered in ichor and slush, but his rage was still perfectly visible. For once, he was anything  _but_  chill. He was  _pissed_ , his imperious dignity unbroken by the mess about him. He was carrying the corpse of the entity over one shoulder, staining his gray suit black.

“Who took Xenathoth out of my personal collection?” he asked coldly.

At this point, the gawkers couldn’t look away.

“Well? WHO DID IT!?”

The dream girl swallowed, creeping around the bookshelf. “I’m sorry,” she said, as if she were admitting to grand conspiracy. “I’m the one who found the book…”

“What, you found it in the back room?” Michael’s boss laughed cruelly, his eyes cutting her down and apart, seeing straight through her for all that he had never met her before. “You’re only edgy, and even then, only by accident. You’re not thief material, and you’re not a thief.

“Griffiths, did you do this?”

Michael started. “No sir!”

“What, then? Do you think  _Teller_  took it? He’s constitutionally incapable of it!”

“No, sir. The book might have… moved on its own?” Michael winced, realizing how bad that sounded. “I mean, it  _was_ a benefactor, sir. You should know.”

“I should know?” His boss shook his head. “ _I_ should know? Just because you think I’m a ‘benefactor’? Jesus, you mortals think we’re all alike, don’t you!”

“What? No!”

It was clear, though, that something was boiling over in Michael’s boss. “Get out!”

“Excuse me?”

“I said, get out! You’re fired! You lost me my djinn  _and_  my patience. Get the fuck out!”

“I didn’t take your book-!”

“OUT!”

Michael worked his jaw helplessly; in the face of the immovable loss, all he could do was shrug. “Okay,” he said. To his surprise, it felt like a bit of a weight off of his chest.

That was how he met Sadie for the first time; and all for the low price of losing a job he wouldn’t have kept forever, anyways.

===

“I saw what you did back there, you know,” Sadie said to him as he was leaving the store.

“I did what now?”

“You tricked that thing, whatever you did. That was pretty cool, so, thanks.”

“Uh. You’re welcome.” Was she really talking to him? That was pretty cool and all, but worth double-checking: she didn’t seem to  _like him_ like him, which was actually also pretty cool, albeit in a different way. “It just seemed like the right thing to do?”

She laughed.

“I’m sorry about your guitar, by the way,” Michael said. “It looked expensive. Are you a musician?”

“My guitar-?” The girl said, and then she went completely pale. “Oh god, no, that was my friend’s and I broke it over a monster’s head because I panicked. I’m so fucked. Why the fuck did I do that?”

“Not a musician, then,” Michael asked rhetorically.

“No! What do I look like, a total cliche?” she asked, throwing her hands up into the air. Michael instantly felt a burst of attraction to her, more intense than any crush he had ever felt before in his entire life. “I can’t play to save my life! And now I owe my friend hundreds! Fuck!”

“I can’t help you there, sorry,” Michael said. And he  _did_  feel sorry about it.

“Don’t worry, you’ve already helped enough.” She didn’t say it with even a hint of sarcasm or condescension. “Serves me right for picking the fucking mystery box.”

“Did you plan to pick the mystery box ahead of time?” Michael asked.

“Of course I did! Who doesn’t plan ahead?”

“Touche.”

It was the small-talk question everyone pondered.  _What would I do, if a benefactor was giving me a choice? What would I do if_ I _met an angel, or a demon, or a spirit, or a wizard, or a god, or a random omnipotent being?_

Not that planning ahead was of much help. Every benefactor was different. Every benefactor gave you different choices and trade-offs. For every mortal transfigured into a great power, there were hundreds more who would never use their powers for anything great; people who walked away from their deals with  _comfy powers_  and  _quality of life_.

And that was to say nothing of those who came out worse off than they were before, as crippled things or as slaves to greater powers. Some would say that the technicolor dream girl got lucky.

“You can always get another shot,” Michael said, consolingly. “Rolling snake eyes once doesn’t make it less likely to happen again.”

“Well, duh,” said the technicolor dream girl. “But it’s not obvious that the metaphor holds; benefactor selections aren’t statistically independent of each other.”

 _God, I want to kiss you. And then read academic journals with you._  “Says who?”

“Says Smith and Land.”

“Smith and Land didn’t control for socioeconomic and social status in their studies,” Michael pointed out. “Harley’s critiques and meta-analyses are available online, if you’re interested.”

“Is that so?” asked the technicolor dream girl. “I’ll have to take a look sometime, but I suppose it doesn’t matter.”

“What?” Michael shot her a look of confusion. “Why?”

She shrugged. “I got my shot, even if things went sour. I won’t be upset if I don’t get another.”

They made more small talk, but of course they eventually parted ways at the bus stop. And Michael felt pretty crappy about it. He felt like an idiot for letting her go, and he felt like an idiot for not wanting to let her go. He literally just met her! And what was he going to do, try to charm her by being the guy who stuck his neck out for her and “saved” her?

What would she think he looked like? A cliche?  _Pass_.

So he went on and lived his life, and forgot about her.

One night, he got off of the bus home from his new job, walked down two streets to crawl through his front door, and collapsed on top of his bed. And that was when he saw the fairy.

It  _looked_  like a fairy, at any rate; it was a thin creature of membranous wings and glitter, flitting about the ceiling.

“Hello, Michael,” the fairy said. “I have come to repay your kindness.”  
  
Michael’s first thought was  _oh, holy shit, a benefactor!_

His second thought was  _oh, fuck, it’s probably a fairy, which means she’s probably the equivalent exchange type. Fairies never do anything for free._ If it tried to repay him for something he had never actually done, would it extract a toll to even the true scales?

“Um. I don’t remember doing any kindness to you before. I’m afraid... I haven’t ever seen you before, to be honest.”

“I know,” said the fairy. “I was in another body at the time.”

The sad thing was that he couldn't remember doing a kindness to  _anything_ that any benefactor would find worth paying back. He had done good things before, but only because they were easy to do, and that made his good deeds so small and worthless. Who or what had the fairy been when he helped it out?

A jagged bolt of shame and disappointment cut through him, dark and wet.

On the other hand, there wasn’t any proof that anything in this conversation meant  _anything_ , or had any wider implications, outside of the benefaction itself.

“Um. Okay. So, I did something for you, and you want to give me something in return?”

“Yes,” the fairy confirmed. “I can offer you Health, or Hearth, or Heroism.”

Michael looked about him, at the confines and disarray of his apartment. As a child, he would have asked for heroism, and never could have imagined that any other choice might be worth picking. If his life would always feel as distant as a story, he might as well make it a story worth reading.

But right now he was a grown-up, and he was behind on his rent again. So was there really any other choice?

“Hearth? What is that, exactly?”

“Haven’t you seen one of these before, Michael? It’s the comfy quality of life option, blah blah blah. I bend things around to give you a home.”

_Holy shit, I’m actually being offered a house! This is one of those cozy magical house benefactors! Maybe my new home comes in a pocket dimension, or it has awesome autonomous servants, or… magical toiletries!_

“I want the Hearth-!” he started to say. And the fairy grabbed him and picked him up-

===

When Sadie met Michael for the second time, it was raining outside, past sunset, and soaking fucking wet like a… towel left out in a lake, or something. Yeah.

Okay, so it was literally a dark and stormy night, but who was asking?

She was sitting in front of her laptop and wasting as much time as humanly possible, when she heard a knock at the door of her flat.

To absolutely no-one’s surprise, it was her roommate.

“My boyfriends dumped me,” Amy said as soon as she saw Sadie, as if by way of explanation for why she was two hours too late getting home.

_Error, priority conflict: get her warm and dry, or console her?_

“Oh no, I’m so sorry!” Sadie said, as she dragged Amy over to the couch, taking her through the flat like she was escorting a wounded viper. “And they just left you outside?”

“My car ran out of gas and I lost my raincoat.”

“Holy shit, Amy, this just isn’t your day.”  _Throw the blankets over her… the good ones, not the bad ones…_

“I know.”

“You poor thing!”  _Oh shit, where’s the tea-?_

“Mmmph,” Amy said.

The story came out of her in bits and pieces, one part at a time:

“It started when we were, you know, having sex,” Amy admitted. She was curled up and crouching against the cushions, her heads wrapped around her head and clenching at her short hair. “I thought it would be kinda hot to watch, them go at it, you know?”

“Wow,” Sadie said mildly. “You kinky bitch.”

“I guess.” Amy shrugged. “I convinced them to bang each other instead of just banging me, and… I immediately knew something was wrong? They were so hot, but they were so hot… for each other. To the point that they forgot I was even there.”

“And you became the third wheel?” Sadie guessed.

“Yeah. Things just weren’t the same after that. They started going on dates with each other, more and more of the time, and leaving me alone…” Amy sighed. “Guess what, my boyfriends were gay. I should have known.”

As much as Sadie would never admit it, she thought she almost saw why a gay man might see something in Amy. Amy wasn’t the girliest girl around; almost the opposite, even, with a body carved like Adonis and striking features that caught the eye.

But there were just some things that you didn’t say to your friends, right? Like, ‘ _you look handsome’,_ or ‘ _you're so gorgeous’_. You were never supposed to say that to a friend. It would never sound good, least of all to someone feeling miserable and coming off of a breakup. Amy was the wrong person to receive the complement, and Sadie was the wrong person to give it.

“I never should have said anything,” Amy mumbled.

“Aww.” Sadie sat next to her on the couch. “What do you think would have happened, if you never said anything?”

“My ex-boyfriends would probably have stayed in the closet?”

“They wouldn’t have actually been straight, though. You know that, right?”

“I know, okay?” Amy threw off her blankets and stood up, striding away from Sadie’s reassuring presence to stomp around the room like Godzilla reborn. “I didn’t  _make_  them gay, or anything. I just gave them the opportunity to be themselves, whoop-de-do. We would have been unhappy in the long run, if nothing changed. That doesn’t mean that I don’t wish — things could have been different? Gah! I’m allowed to be sad about losing my old dreams, even if we’re objectively on a better path now!”

Amy was working herself up into a fit, as she so often did; Sadie didn’t want to have to see that. It seemed too sad. She wanted to help her be better.

_Distract her with hopelessly romantic pedantry?_

“I can do you one better," Sadie said. "Humans should have an inalienable moral right to be sad. Anywhere, anyone, anytime.”

“Sadie, no. It doesn’t even make sense to say that morality ‘should’ be a certain way. We don’t allow meta-obligations in this household.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, that is so! Also, such a universal moral law would have long-term negative consequences by disallowing people from interfering with the sadness of those with depression. Do you really want me to leave you alone when you're mopey?”

“No, of course not! But you can’t bake a consequentialist omelette without cracking a few deontological eggs.”

“Rule utilitarianism is pragmatic, but also self-negating. I disagree.”

Whatever Sadie was about to say next was undercut by an enormous  _crack_  of displaced air. In the blink of an eye, a man and a  _creature_  were thrust into the room at an odd angle.

“-option!” the man said, continuing from where he had left off.

Amy screamed, falling onto her butt and then scooting herself away from the interlopers. Sadie’s jaw dropped as soon as she recognized who she was looking at. “Bookstore boy?” she asked, stunned.

Bookstore boy jumped and looked around, then turned to stare at the creature. “Why did you take me _here?_ ”

“You said you wanted the Hearth, so I gave it to you.”

“And you decided to room me with the technicolor dream girl!?”

“She doesn’t look very technicolor to me,” said the creature. “I don’t see why you should be upset; she can give you a home you can always go back to!”

“What the fuck is going on!?” Amy yelled, folding her arms across her chest.

“Oh god I am so sorry,” said bookstore boy. “I am not trying to invade your life, that was this benefactor’s idea-”

“Holy shit, bookstore boy, is that you or not?” Sadie asked, stepping forward and pushing the ugly creature out of the way.

“Um. If you’re asking me if I’m the guy who met you at the bookstore then yes that is me.”

“ _That’s_  the guy you have a crush on?” Amy asked, her voice skeptical. She eyed the bookstore boy up and down, and Sadie thought that she was being rather unfair; she obviously didn’t have a crush on him, but it wasn’t like he was awful on the eyes. He had pretty green eyes.

“I do not have a crush on him!” Sadie said. “I only met him once!”

“Yes, and that’s exactly your problem, Sadie. You’re incapable of having crushes except on unattainable men. ‘Charles from Antarctica is so dreamy.’ ‘I want Gilgamesh of Uruk to raw me.’ ‘I’m putting a husbando body pillow on my wish list.’”

“That is not true!” Sadie protested. “I have crushes on normal men all of the time! And I've never said anything like that!”

“I’ll… just go,” bookstore boy said.

“Please do!” Amy said. “We don’t need any more roommates-!”

“Did I mention he could cook?” the fairy interjected.

“That's not true!” bookstore boy protested. “I haven’t cooked in months!”

“But you  _can_  do it,” the fairy said. “I rest my case.”

“I changed my mind, we’re keeping him,” Amy said.

As it turned out, bookstore boy’s name was Michael, and he took to life in their flat with gusto. He did his dishes (unlike Amy) and didn’t clog the drain with his hair (unlike Amy) and cooked (unlike Amy), even if he was a fucking weirdo (also (mostly) unlike Amy).

At this point, Sadie had gone from rainbow to indigo. “I think it’s more effective to do colors one at a time, rather than trying all of them at once.”

“Translation:” Amy whispered, as soon as Sadie wasn’t paying attention. “‘I’m tired of maintaining the tie-dyed t-shirt I call my hair.’”

One morning, Michael had cooked breakfast, and was dishing out eggs to the others when Amy checked her phone, began cursing, and gave her food to Sadie instead.

“Thanks!” Sadie said.

“Fuck off!” Amy yelled, running to the other side of the room and grabbing her guitar out of the case. “I've got shit to do!”

“What exactly does that mean?” Michael asked.

“It means she’s tuning her new guitar,” Sadie explained.

“Because you ruined my old one!”

“I was about to be a slave owner for all eternity! What did you want me to do, woman!?”

Michael snickered, and stole some of Amy’s — now Sadie’s — food. “Well, obviously she’s the musician," he said. "I’m in tech.”

“That’s cliche,” Sadie said.

“I know,” Michael replied. “What do you do?”

Sadie’s eyes brightened, and Michael knew he was staring into the face of someone with a passion. “My job is knowing and synthesizing obscene amounts of forgotten occult lore. So what was that thing you did to chase off the benefactor, by the way?”

“She means to say that her job is benefactor chasing,” Amy said, plucking a guitar string. 

“It is  _not_  benefactor  _chasing_ ,” Sadie replied. “If I wanted to choose my own adventure I would drop everything else and go live at home with my Mom as a NEET. Benefactors go for NEETs.”

“So what is your job, then?” Michael asked, and Sadie fucking jumped up out of her chair and onto the table.  _Jesus Christ!_  
  
“I’m trying to save the world,” Sadie cried. She looked far more serious than should have been possible for a crusader who would jump around mid-conversation and declare her earnest intent to save mankind. “Benefactors could rapture the planet, and I want to make them do it!”

“Oh god,” Amy said, rolling her eyes until they nearly slid out of her skull. “Here she goes again.”

“Shut up,” Sadie suggested amicably. “Look, benefactors are the ones who  _move_  the  _world!_  They abduct lonely 4chan anons into the metacosmos! They have magical girl mascots fighting for recruits! Space whales leaking godshatter! Overdeities spawning off demigods! Mad scientists, releasing their inventions! And angels! And demons! And fairies! And squid! Magical realms and perverted sorcerors!” 

At this point, Amy had begun strumming on her guitar, churning out disgustingly irreverent notes in time with Sadie’s tirade.

“All of these events have their own internal logic, and appear to be motivated by that internal logic, but how likely is that really? If every year, a completely different and simultaneously impossible-to-reproduce accident gave a different person superpowers, would you conclude that those accidents were pure random chance? Or would you decide that they were manifestations of a single underlying ‘give people superpowers’ phenomenon?”

“Well  _obviously_  benefactions are connected to each other,” Michael said. “But what does it matter?”

“It matters because the current state of things is absolute garbage!” Sadie cried. (Amy stuck a minor chord so loud that the window behind her rattled.) “The kinds of power that benefactors hand out? They could make the world so much better, if only they weren’t handed out so selectively! What if _everyone_ was immortal and smart and educated? What if _no-one_ needed food and water? What if _everyone_ had their own magical realm!

“If we just understood how benefaction worked and what powered it… if we could control it… we could abolish involuntary death and suffering!”

“And if we were able to control God himself, we could do the same,” Amy said. She was obviously speaking as someone who had been at this with Sadie before, but she was only arguing now as if to warn Michael away from what she saw as madness. “How are you going to learn anything worthwhile what’s going on, let alone put your knowledge to use?”

“Magic is real,” Sadie said. “The benefactors have put enough of out there that’s ‘teachable’ or ‘learnable’ for whatever reason. Obviously that’s the first place to start, and it’s where me and my co-workers  _have_  started.”

“And then what?” Amy asked. “Just because you know how to play the game, that doesn’t mean you can change the rules.”

“But it’s obviously a metagame!” Sadie retorted. “The rules change over time! There is metamagic!”

“I think she sort of has a point,” Michael said, and he closed his eyes because he didn’t want to gang up on anyone. Let alone the girl he had had a boner for and a crush on. “Just because you can play the game — even exploit or speedrun it! — that doesn’t mean there’s an arbitrary code execution glitch to find. So to speak.”

Sadie sighed. “I know. But… I can’t just  _not try!_ ”

“Why?”

“Because… I just wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t think I had done all I had could.”

“Whatever,” Amy said shortly, packing her guitar into her case. “I’m heading out, my guitar works, and I’ve got a gig. You two can talk ethics.”

Michael watched her go, practically on the edge of his seat, jittering in his skin.

“That’s a sad way to live,” he eventually said.

“Pardon?”

“It’s a sad way to live,” he explained. “Holding yourself accountable for fixing the world.”

“Of course it’s sad!” Sadie said. “That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t — look. I can blame other people, which gets me lost in rabbit holes worrying about what other people haven’t done. Or I can blame myself for not being good enough, which means I beat myself up an unhealthy amount, but I stay focused on what I can actually do.”

“You could just discard the concept of ‘blame’ entirely,” Michael said lightly. “Free will is bogus anyways, right?”

“Hah. Hah. Hah. That’s not the point! The point is that holding myself accountable… gives me more control!”

“Even if it leads you to absurd conclusions when you take it too seriously?”

“Yes!”

“A real control freak, then.”

 

 

“You are insufferable,” Sadie said, and gave a long-suffering sigh.

Michael laughed. “I was being serious when I said it was sad, you know.”

It was sad and maybe a little bit arrogant. If everyone held themselves unaccountable for everything, the world would be an awful place… but the world wouldn’t be any better if everyone held themselves perfectly accountable for everything, too.

“I know,” Sadie said. And then she deflected. “But what about you?”

“What about me?”

“You sound like you’re speaking from experience.”

He shrugged. It was something he didn’t normally like to talk about personally, but of course he had started it. “I don’t know. I didn’t ever feel  _bad_  about myself for not doing enough. I just got angry, instead.”

“At other people?”

“Angry at the world for disappointing us.” He was so angry that it was truly disgusting. “It made me feel like a monster. I didn’t feel  _guilty_  for feeling like a monster, but I hated it, anyways.”

“So you tried to claim personal responsibility, instead,” Sadie finished for him.

“More or less.” Being a font of generic niceness felt infinitely more pleasant than having to be angry at the world, for not giving you what you felt you were owed. “But in the long run, I couldn’t change the world, or make myself any happier.”

“Hmm.” Sadie closed her eyes. “I’m glad you’re not a monster, at least. You’re much easier on the eyes as a human.”

“Aww, thanks,” Michael said. He couldn’t stop himself from looking down to see himself, as if to double-check and make sure that she was actually wrong about that. “I dry-clean my human skin suit every weekend.”

Sadie snorted. “So what do you do, now that you’re not trying to save the world in the name of not being angry? Maybe I should take a page out of your book.”

“I spend time with my friends.” 

“Do you  _have_  friends?”

“Wow. That was incredibly mean. Just for that you’re obligated to repay me by becoming  _my_  friend.”

“Done,” Sadie said. “We’re friends now.”

“Cool! Um. Uh.”

“Spit it out, Mike. Friends don’t keep secrets from their friends.”

“Do you want to go out for coffee some time?”

Only hours later, he was coming inside of her, holding her close; it was strange, because he had always fled from himself and others in the act of sex. Letting his soul all but leave his body, crawling inside of itself in order to think about anything but what he was doing. Fantasy was always supposed to be better than reality, right? Narrative itself was sexy, and any couple who role-played in bed could tell you. Fantasy was normal.

But in the moment, in that moment, he found he  _wanted_  to be in reality, to be with her. He couldn’t flee from the moment even if he tried, because he was drawn to her. He wanted to be close to her, and make her feel good, and listen to the timbre of his voice as she let go with him. She was lovely.

He was so in over his head.

And as for her-

Well, many a man had wanted Sadie, but she had never enjoyed that. She didn't  _want_ to be  _wanted_ , because that just left her with another ideal for her to live up to. Another way she could fall short of a flawless and shining glittering generality.

But Michael wanted her, wanted to be _with her_ , and for once, she could enjoy that. There was a raw, naked vulnerability to his wanting, and it might very well have been pathetic, but somehow it was only a thing of tender affection.

“We should go out for coffee again some time,” she said to him afterwards, cuddling up against his body.

“Is it really coffee that you want?” Michael asked, and her lips betrayed her, seizing a kiss. 

===

“We need to think about immortality,” Sadie said one night. "I'm serious, really really serious, Mike."

"I know you're serious," Michael replied. "But are we really so weird that this is the time and place? Isn't that a bit of a non-sequitur?"

“It was not a non-sequitur! It made total sense from the inside of my head.”

“How do you get from 'fucking your boyfriend' to 'immortality'?”

Sadie blushed. “So. Okay, this is awkward.”

“ _I'm_ awkward. It’s all good.”

She blushed even harder. “Well, we had sex, and that… that… made me think of the contact I got from a benefactor in the mail and that made me think of immortality because that was one of the things they were offering and it just came out before I could not say it.”

Michael nodded as if that made total sense, then paused. “What!? You got approached by another benefactor?”

“Yeah… uh, I’ve been a little bit anxious about it,” Sadie admitted, looking away. “I didn’t think I would like the choices they were offering.”

“Why?”

“You won’t like it.”

“How could I not like it?” Michael paused and double-checked his assumptions. “Living forever is living forever. Well, violence or misfortune would get you eventually, but still! What price would be so high to pay as to make living forever not worth it?”

“You  _really_ won’t like it,” Sadie said.

“Try me?”

Sadie tried him.

He didn’t like it.

===

_To Sarah Haley and Michael Griffiths, hoping this missive finds you well:_

_The two of you have been selected for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, to participate in the Slut Life experience! Experience a vacation on a whole new world, in a new society! Acquire new bodies, bio-engineered to your specifications! Become famous — or infamous — all across the universe! All expenses paid for in advance!_

(At this point, the text of the letter was interrupted by photographs of pretty blue sky and golden-blonde beaches, and such sickeningly high-class amenities as indoor pools and theatres, downsized to fit in a ‘mere’ mansion.)

_Participants are monitored and recorded for the duration of their stay! Never fear that you’ll forget the new memories you make with us!_

_And for those of you looking out for number one, participants who comply with all terms and conditions through the duration of their stay are eligible to receive rewards! Including but not limited to:_

  * _An indefinite lifetime warranty on your new bodies! Become the little girl, and never worry about your health insurance again!_


  * _Up to $10,000,000 worth of your preferred form of currency! Cryptocurrencies and pure Benthamite utilitronium available!_


  * _Your very own romantic partner, designed to specifications! Spice things up and skip the unicorn hunting, or just marry your waifu!_


  * _Free mind uploading! We provide a lifetime guarantee on memory storage and FLOPS in the Cthugha Matrioshka Brain!_


  * _And many more!_  



_Call us at (̴͔͙͕̩̖̰̾ͩͩ̈̆͌̀2̞̭̰̺̻̖̠͑͛0͚̻̖͙̱͐͗̅̈ͬ͠ͅ9̡͍̤͇̮̈)̌ ̲̂͊͒͛̓̌7̗̦̜͔͈̀̿͋͐̓̊1̸̥͙̣͖̻̍̄͆̉̅5̟̈ͯ͐̾̓͌-͓ͩ6̡̞͋͋̀9̺͊ͮ̀ͯ̅̊̒͝6̯̪̃9̖̮̹̬̗̣̞͌͐ for more information, or come to our outreach facility, located at 8̶͔̮̼̯̭̭̆ͨ̃̊͋̈́7͓̯͖̠͇͌̿ͬ͐ͨͨ͞8̷̹̤̝̠̂͌̏ͣ͑̎̓9͍̻̫̺͐ ̞ͥ̓ͩ̽͋E̴̺̺̤ͯ͋̌͐ͤx̨̙̍̾ͮi͓̝̹̜͈̬̙͋ţ̝̬̖ ͉̐̑ͮͅS̶̭̼̮͐t̬̬̞̖̘̯̿ͣ͘rͧ͐͐͗e͙̘͈̐̾͊ͯ͒ͬ̚͟e̷̲̬̻̩͆̿̿̊t̞̊̓͂̆͜ ̣̭̜̫̯ͧ̊͢N̔ͭ͂̌̒͠o̘ͣͯ̾̈̏̈́̊͢r̙͖̥̦t̝̙̦̟̼̺ͨ͋̃h̘̲̾e̠̮̖a̖̯̩̝̼̒ͅs͚̣ͮ̐̊ẗ̰̺́̀̑͊! Please reach out to us as soon as possible to confirm your participation._

_Sincerely,_

_L. Coppelia, Slut Life Incorporated_

The message had come in the mail, sandwiched between bank statements, bills, and six different scams; Sadie had opened it as soon as she saw it, because the address was written out in finest calligraphy. “So extra,” she had remarked, and Michael snorted as she recounted her discovery.

“Do you suppose this is a form letter?” Michael asked, running his thumb along the edge of the paper, feeling it push through the surface of his skin to leave a shallow papercut.

“God, that sounds absolutely horrible. How many participants would they have to be sending letters to, before they went and formalized it? You’re going to give me nightmares.”

“I know  _I’m_  already going to have nightmares, though. And if we have the same nightmare then we can share it with each other. Wouldn’t that be romantic?”

“Shut up,” Sadie suggested.

There was a coffee ring across one corner of the ostentatious gilt paper, and it smelled like cum.

“At risk of stating the complete obvious, they  _definitely_  want to make porn of us.”

“I already said that, Mike.”

“Yeah, but this makes it obvious! What the hell? What the fuck!?”

“It’s just more benefactor bullshit,” Sadie said patiently. “They're always asking for weird shit. Really, I’m more interested in the stuff that they don’t confabulate. The phat lewt. The rewards. The powers. The choices in the see-why-oh-ay. You wanna upload into a supercomputer powered by a Great Old One?”

“Pass.”

“But you could live forever in there?”

“Only if they don’t have any more options,” Michael said. There was a distant look on his face. “A megastructure would be a more efficient substrate for life, but I don’t really care. The universe hasn’t been a closed system of increasing negentropy for decades, and I don’t really want to jump in the god-machine. It could do _anything_ to us.”

“It’s benefactor bullshit,” Sadie said stubbornly. “They can hold stuff back, but they don’t actually  _lie_  about the details of their rewards. It’s backed by whatever passes for law for them.”

“I still veto it, even if they say to my face that it’s all above the table.”

“That’s bionormative. Join the synth side.”

“Fuck you.”

“I rather think that’s the plan, dear.”

That was how the two of them found themselves at Exit Street. It was a bustling intersection, and completely mundane, to boot. Sadie couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe this  _wasn’t_  a benefactor after all. When she opened the door in the alley, would it just be some randoms, standing there with a camera and a banner?  _Haha, we trolled you so hard! Trolled you! Epic troll, man! Come on, did you actually think that anyone would jack off to a porno of_ you _?_

“Bad brains, go away.”

“Pardon?” Michael asked.

“Nothing. Just nerves.”

Hesitating, she reached out to the brass doorknob and gave it a turn, pushing the door inwards and getting a look at the other side.

It actually wasn’t that bad, really. It looked like a normal reception area or lobby, complete with tables, chairs, and magazines… if said lobby was five times larger than expected, and inhabited by a mixed assortment from the set containing every single hentai character,  _ever_ , and then some. The magazines for visitors to distract themselves with were screamingly pornographic; one of them had been left open on the table, exposing an animated paper pop-up of six of Escher’s Curl-Ups in an orgy.

The walls and ceiling were soft cream verging on eggshell white, and made of a finely polished stone. Even at that very moment, two nearly-naked pretty-boys were kneeling down against the floor and scrubbing away, clad in silk frills and wielding rough rags. One of them was visibly aching and hard in his panties, while the other one was locked in chastity, without the freedom to get hard in the first place.

The windows were cut clean through the walls, bereft of window-panes. One of them opened out over a city of fine spires, interconnected by a thousand bridges and studded with distant people like grains of sand. Greenery bloomed between the buildings in place of asphalt, and beyond the city was only the expanse of a blindingly blue and clear sky.

The other window opened up into a cavernous city of clockwork brass and angles, illuminated by the red heat of melting metal. It might have seemed sterile, but there was something almost  _lifelike_  about the rhythm and motion of the brass. Suggestive and even  _erotic_. Far beyond, it gave way to dark stone and miniature moving figures of flesh.

“Woah,” Michael said, although he wasn’t looking at the landscape or scenery. Instead his gaze was drawn to the people around them.

“You’ve been a good boy, haven’t you?” one of them cooed, and Michael realized with a lurch that he was looking at a demon. At the very least, it was someone doing an incredible job of cosplaying as a demon, with scaly red skin and horns; and the demon was  _talking to his cock as if it were a separate person_.

“Jesus fuck,” Michael mumbled, and he spun away with flaming cheeks.

“I think it’s kind of cute,” Sadie whispered in his ear.

“What!?”

“In an existentially terrifying way, I mean.  _Romantic_  existential terror.”

“Gyuh. I did not consent to thinking about this.”

A nude woman pushed past them from behind, stammering something unintelligible — “Telel puhdre!” — and striding up to what seemed to be the front desk. Without any other obvious place to go, Sadie started after her, and Michael started after Sadie. Front desks were a great place to ask for help, even if it made you look terribly stupid.

The other woman was completely human by all appearances, but the entirety of her lower back was covered in the black ink of an intricate arabesque tramp stamp. It didn’t look like anything but an abstract design, but to Michael’s confusion, he could read it as if it were written in plain english.

“‘By fucking this slut, you implicitly consent to following the terms of service, documented in quadrants one through four…’” Sadie narrated. “‘Post-script: you must be at least this long to ride.’”

“Is  _anyone_  that long?”

“Around here?” Sadie glanced about at the men (and some of the women) in the room. “Probably.”

The two of them waited behind the girl with the tramp stamp for five minutes, while she engaged in an increasingly-vigorous shouting match with the receptionist. Sadie and Michael understood approximately none of it, although the girl with the tramp stamp said a few words that sounded like they might have meant “fuck!”.

When their turn came, the receptionist looked them over with apparent boredom, although it was hard to tell, because she had the head of a black goat.

“Hi,” Michael said. “We were offered the chance to participate on…” he trailed off.

“Slut Life,” Sadie finished for him.

“Yes, Slut Life,” Michael repeated. “I’m Michael Griffiths, and this is my girlfriend, Sadie… ah, Sarah Haley.”

“Mmm,” said the woman with the goat head.

They stared at her as she stood motionless for half of a minute before finally moving. She let out a low  _baaa-aaa-aaaa_ sound, and another goat-headed-woman trotted out from a back room behind the desk.

“Hold the front for a few minutes, would you, Bellaal? I need to take care of a special case.” The black goat rummaged through several drawers, withdrawing a key and several sheafs of paper.

“Another one? Really?”

“Yes, yes, we’ll be overworked for a while.” The black goat waved an arm through the air, terminating with the mutant offspring of a claw and a hoof. “You know you enjoy it.”

“Hmph.” Bellaal snuffled.

The black goat made off down a hallway without even checking to see if Sadie and Michael were following after her, and so they had to chase after her. They passed a long sequence of doors, some closed and some open, and they walked by more than a few more absurdly attractive people and creatures.

They saw two muscular men, trapped on a sex-seesaw in an convoluted game of predicament bondage.

They saw a tentacle monster made of homogeneous slime, having sex with a liquescent puddle of writhing tentacle-like worms.

They saw a humanoid figure of crystal, beginning the process of twinning.

They saw an absurdly tall and skinny giantess, holding a dwarf up off of the ground  _by her collar_. It took the two of them a moment to realize that the dwarf wasn’t choking in a leash like a noose, because the dwarf was  _breathing through her cunt_.

“Here we are,” said the black goat, unlocking a heavy oak door and beckoning them inside. “Take a seat.”

A low-to-the-ground table sat in the center of the room, and the walls were lined with hundreds of filing cabinets. The black goat began paging through the boxes, searching for more papers. “Haley, Haley, Haley… found it!” She gave her prize a sloppy kiss.

Michael tried not to wrinkle his nose as she shuffled her documents and began passing them out, still covered in a few drops of spittle.

“Right, here we have… order forms, contracts, informational brochures, contact information…”

Michael reached out and began paging through the terms of the contract that Slut Life was offering; it was a noxious mess of legalese looping around itself, offering 'credits' in exchange for permission to subject the signatory to various sexual situations.

_Reinforced and shortened tendons, worth +5 SlutCredits*. Selectively-induced amnesia, worth +10 SlutCredits*. Submission inception, worth +10 SlutCredits*._

_*Disclaimer: SlutCredits are a contractual abstraction without any non-Imaginary manifestation by default. SlutCredits are not any form of recognized currency outside of the context of this contract. Unspent credits can not be redeemed anywhere else or spent in any other Slut Life contracts and sessions. SlutCredits are_ not _affiliated with or a component of any credit tracking or reputation economy system, such as (including but not limited to): WhoreCredit, RateMyRaping, and Lockchain._

“I think there must be a mistake,” Sadie said, already reading over his shoulder. “You gave us different contracts. I don’t have any of these options”

“Oh, I absolutely did give you different contracts,” the black goat said blithely, sitting down across the table. “It’s company policy, you see.”

“Why?”

_Because they’re the kind of benefactor that makes you pay_ , Michael distantly realized.  _And they want to make sure that everyone pays somehow._

“We believe that customizing our offers to participants provides greater satisfaction in the long run,” the black goat explained smoothly.

“Well, okay, but it’s still a mistake, isn’t it? I think you switched my offers with Mike’s offers.”

“Oh no, not at all.”

“Excuse me?”

The goat laughed, and Michael paged over the details of his contract; it offered credits in exchange for submission to a laundry list of increasingly elaborate feminization schema, all of the way back through to the end. Breast implants. Implants in  _other_ parts of the body. Malleable bones. Piercings. Hormone injections. Nanotechnology. Nanosurgery.  _Normal surgery_. Curses. Engram editing. Conditioning.

“Perhaps you’re confused,” the black goat said. “What were you expecting, Miss Haley?”

“I was expecting that you would try to turn us into porn stars! We made our peace with that! But not like this!” Sadie jammed a finger into the page. “You want me to be a musclebound hunk? And- Michael? What the fuck!?”

“Really, I thought you would have already realized,” said the goat. “If the point of this experience was that you were supposed to enjoy it, then we would never bother offering any  _rewards_  in the first place. The only reason we’re using honey is because we want you to drink your vinegar like a good little girl, first.

“Or did you think… what, exactly? Did you imagine that we would give you the best sex of your life, and we would give you your ideal bodies, and then you would get an extra reward on top of that? For… ‘putting up’ with an unambiguous improvement to your quality of life?”

Sadie bit her lip, and Michael’s stomach was churning.

“Why exactly do you call it Slut Life, if you don’t just hire for ‘sluts’?” Michael asked.

“Well…” the goat shrugged. “‘Slut Life’ is a bit of a euphemism, you see. Even amongst the libertine, it’s more photogenic than any name which would reveal our true colors.”

“Oh my god,” Sadie said, and she got up out of her chair. “You’re fucking  _sick_. Michael, let’s go.”

He  _should_  have stood up right then and there, and left this terrible perversion of a universe behind, but something stayed him, a cold iron nail of logic:  _weren’t you the one who told Sadie to do the math, earlier? An immortal infinite lifespan is obviously worth suffering through any finite period of torture and rape, QED. Stick with the benefactor and reap the rewards._

_Hmm, that’s an interesting argument_ , said the part of him who Really Did Not Want To Get Raped.  _But it’s also completely stupid, because they’re not offering a literally infinite lifespan. Eternal youth won’t be worth anything to us if a Jumper comes back from the ‘chain tomorrow, and blows up the planet with fictional laser beams. Or if a game of Chesscourt goes bad and the universe gets retroactively remixed. Or if someone just sets off the nukes. All of those are going to happen eventually._

_Even a finite but sufficiently long lifespan is worth a shorter period of rape and traumatization_ , said the part of him that Really Did Not Want To Die.  _Shut up and do the math!_

_Ahem?_  said the Voice Of Reason. _Hello? We’re not unbreakable. If they rape us for long enough — let alone if they get to inject porn logic into this shitshow — we’re probably going to be drooling and brain dead by the time they’re through with us. That’s just as bad as dying the normal way, no thanks._

“Yeah, I’m coming with you,” Michael said, or tried to say, anyways.

But something stilled his mouth, some mote of hesitation on his tongue.

It was insane.

He shouldn't have even been considering this.

And then the black goat cut him off before he could even get over himself.

“Come on, Haley,” it said. “You haven’t even seen what we can offer you, if you just stick around and suck it up.

“Wouldn’t you like the power to save your planet?”

Sadie stiffened, and with a sinking feeling, Michael knew that they weren’t leaving any time soon.

_Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!_

“What do you mean, exactly?” Sadie asked, her voice low.

“It’s in the rewards, of course,” said the goat. “You’re free to spend the credits you earn in order to pick your own brand-new superpowers. Invent your powers from whole cloth, even, as long as you can get get the narrative resonance right. Or, if you prefer a little extra structure, we can guarantee you a meeting with absolutely any benefactor who was, is, or will be extant.”

“You’re lying,” Sadie said, although of  _course_ the goat wasn’t lying.

The pages of their contracts flipped over to reveal the relevant clauses, and Michael read them with growing horror, while Sadie read them with growing determination.

“Sadie. No. Don’t do it. Nothing good will come of this!”

“Shut up, Michael,” she suggested.

“Sadie, this is not too good to be true, this is anything but! This is too awful to be true!”

“I said,  _shut up._  I’m thinking.”

“You can’t do this!” he said to her, which was patently untrue. He turned to the goat, instead, who was grinning with a wicked smile. “ _You_  can’t do this! Don’t hold this over her head like a fucking carrot on a string!”

_What the hell are you doing?_ Screamed a distant font of generic niceness.  _You don’t ever value one person over the livelihood of an entire planet!_

“You won’t be able to save the planet,” Michael said. “You’re not changing anything about benefactors! You’re not changing the game, you’re just buying in!”

“Yeah, well, I  _can’t_  change the game, okay!?” Sadie shot back bitterly. “You were right, and Amy was right. I can’t fucking… make hammers  _obsolete_. I still have the duty to be the biggest hammer I can be, because there are a lot of nails that need hammering in.”

“You don’t have that duty!” Michael said, desperately. “You can’t let them  _violate you_  for the greater good!”

“I can, and I will,” Sadie says, and he knows she means it because  _she sounds like a cliche._

_Fuck. Goddamn it. Goddamn it. Goddamn it!_

“There’s nothing I can do to change your mind, is there?” Michael asked.

“Absolutely not.”

“Then I’m coming with you,” he declared. “If you’re going to get raped to the ninth circle of hell and back in the name of phenomenal cosmic powers, you should do it with someone you care about.”

She stared at him, agog, and oh-so-slowly, she built a crooked smile.

“You’re not so different from me, after all,” she said.


End file.
